Real-Time Drug Monitoring: A New Era for Drug Discovery and Development

By Bio-IT World Staff 

July 1, 2025 | In Stanford University's engineering labs, Tom Soh has been wrestling with a paradox that has plagued medicine for decades. While modern jet engines generate terabytes of data every hour to prevent catastrophic failures, the human body gets monitored only during annual checkups or after something has already gone wrong. 

This contradiction has driven Soh's 15-year quest to revolutionize drug discovery through continuous molecular monitoring. His latest breakthrough could fundamentally change how pharmaceutical companies test new drugs and treat patients. 

A Microscopic Revolution 

Soh and his team have developed SENSBIT (Stable Electrochemical Nanostructured Sensor for Blood In situ Tracking), a microfabricated soft needle that can continuously monitor drug concentrations in flowing blood for up to seven days—a dramatic leap from previous devices that failed after just 11 hours. 

The sensor uses synthetic antibodies called aptamers that act like molecular switches, changing shape when they encounter target molecules and generating measurable electrochemical signals. In their proof-of-concept study, the Stanford team successfully tracked kanamycin antibiotic as it flowed through the bloodstream, with the sensor retaining over 70% of its signal strength after a month in human serum. 

Transforming Drug Development 

For pharmaceutical researchers who have long relied on periodic blood draws to understand drug behavior, this represents a quantum leap in precision. Traditional clinical trials require educated guesses about when to sample blood, often missing critical peaks and valleys in drug concentration. SENSBIT provides a continuous stream of pharmacokinetic data, revealing exactly how quickly drugs are absorbed, how long they remain active, and how the body eliminates them. 

This real-time monitoring could dramatically accelerate drug development. Failed compounds could be identified earlier, saving millions in development costs, while promising therapies could advance more rapidly through clinical trials. The technology's modular design means it can be adapted to monitor virtually any therapeutic target, from hormones to the complex signaling molecules that orchestrate immune responses. 

The Vision: Prevention Over Treatment 

Soh's ultimate ambition extends to "listening in" on conversations between immune cells. When the body encounters pathogens, immune cells communicate through cytokines, orchestrating different responses for viral, bacterial, or fungal infections. Real-time monitoring of these molecular communications could allow doctors to identify infections before symptoms appear and select appropriate treatments immediately. 

This capability represents a shift from "reactive medicine"—waiting for symptoms before treating disease—to predictive, preventive healthcare that could keep people healthy by identifying problems before they become disasters. 

The Stanford team is preparing for first-in-human trials within 12 to 18 months. For an industry facing pressure to develop more effective treatments while reducing costs, technologies like SENSBIT offer unprecedented insight into how drugs behave in the human body, potentially ushering in an era of more precise, personalized medicine. 

For Deborah Borfitz’s complete story, visit Diagnostics World News.